Sat May 02 1998 12:00:
Adam thinks I should
skip getting a 4-track and instead do my recording direct onto
computer. There are numerous mixing programs for Linux, but I'd need
to get a better sound card and more RAM if I were to go that
route. But I could use that technology, and the accompanying frogs,
for non-recording computing tasks. It would probably also be cheaper
than getting a 4-track, and I would be able to do more funky stuff
with it.

So I have no idea when OMP!(25K-4)YOPPO
will crawl out of the primordial muck into reality. If it looks like
it's gonna take a while I'll cook up another low-fi karaoke machine
bonanza for a summer release in the style of the It's Only
Ketchup/It's Only Mountain Dew Jake side-split. I don't know what
the word on IOK/IOMD is; we sent Jake the tapes but I have yet to hear
from him.

So here's what's taking shape. Adam and
Kris have expressed interest in being a real part of this album, yea,
even being actual members of The Open Standards Band. Adam is going to
play guitar on Talking Embrace and Extend Blues and my
Metallica-bashfest Gravedigger, which song impressed Adam so
much with its relentless satirizing of Metallica's inane lyrics that
he voluntarily crawled out of the festering pit of Metallica worship
(true story!). I need him to do that because Gravedigger
includes an excessively long heavy metal guitar solo, and heavy metal
guitar solos are not my forte, but they are Adam's. Adam also wants to
collaborate on a song with me, and I want him to play Satan's Son
Stole My Girlfriend and Crummy, which will entertwine him
even further with the album. Kris has the keyboards for the Mentos
parodies, and will probably be doing even more stuff. So what's
happening is that OMP!(25-K)YOPPO is turning into a monster beyond my
control. With the updated recording hardware (whatever that may be)
and the collaboration of other musicians on the album, the threat of
it becoming an actual independant album release becomes very real, and
we all know which road that leads down (hint: ______ is paved with
good intentions).

I wrote another blues song today. It's more
of a grunge-bluegrass thing, actually. It's called Saccharine
Hillbilly Bluegrass Blues and so far it just goes "Saccharine
Hillbilly Bluegrass Blues, I'm not gonna stand here and watch you
lose." I may put in more lyrics, I may not.

Bluegrass is cool. I dig that whole
bluegrass/hillbilly thing. It's hard to be pretentious when your
instruments are banjos and mandolins and fiddles. The blues are great,
too. They're too corny to be pretentious.

I've written several blues songs. I wrote
Talking Embrace and Extend Blues after being inspired by the
talking blues songs on the Bob Dylan bootlegs Mrs. Irby lent me which
I need to return, and I want to write some talking blues songs the
names of which are lame puns, such as Talking Dirty Blues and
Talking
About Willis Blues. I improvised a blues song once called
The Meta-Blues which went something like "I'm so sick of the
blues, baby, so sick I could scream (2x)/I hope tomorrow I wake up and
realize it was all a bad dream. I got the meta-blues, baby, and the
meta-blues got me (2x)/I want to rock and roll, and lose control, but
these blues, they won't set me free." I wrote a blues-ish song called
I Got Soul, Dammit which explores the protective attitude of
numerous people towards that ephermeal quality known as "soul". The
Bourbonwitha Twist and Suckered and Stoned both use a sort
of blues progression, although I guess they fall more into the
category of swing, and Get
Down Or Die was designed to copy the sanitized teen
blues-ripoff rock of the 1950s created by record company executives so
that the youth of America wouldn't be dancing to music played by black
people.

Anyway, back to the recording
discussion. Expect something out in summer, but not neccessarily
OMP!(25K-4)YOPPO. OMP!(25K-4)YOPPO will be the high-quality tape that
Mrs. Irby has been bugging me about making. I don't know what will be
on the interim tape.